Foresight of a strong willed President

By Dhaneshi YATAWARA

Its just over one year since our gallant troops liberated the total Eastern theatre of this island nation that was crushed and tortured with the dictatorship of Prabhakaran. At the moment, our soldiers are holding the line strong at the Wanni front facing Pooneryn and Kilinochchi just a few kilometres ahead. The day is not so far when our heroic soldiers will flush away ruthless terrorism that cursed our land for over three decades with a great leadership that would rarely appear in the history of a country. If not for this brave leader who adores challenges, the first citizen of the country President Mahinda Rajapaksa, our countrymen would not witness the downfall of terrorism without betraying the country.

The development lapse the Easterners faced and the Northerners are facing is directly a result of being trampled by the iron boots of this ruthless terrorist organization. A peaceful, well harmonized society can be threatening to any terror group. It is a well known fact of any guerilla organization. Hence, there is no doubt as to the LTTE's attempts at trying to sabotage the proper functioning of the country.

LTTE strongly rejected all the democratic options given to them several times throughout. With the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement, many paths opened up for the LTTE to strengthen themselves with arms and ammunition with funds and specially to win the sympathy of the international community.

President Rajapaksa took over his duty on the back of popular demand of a majority vote of the people against this backdrop in November 2005. The LTTE was reaching towards their mono-ethnic separate state day by day. The Security Forces stood firm against the ruthless LTTE since they had a solid leader as Commander-in-Chief.

Initially, the President planned peace talks with the LTTE in a fully democratic manner with the assistance of the international community. He made the LTTE come for the round table discussions held in Oslo and Geneva.

Instead of bringing in reasonable suggestions the LTTE representatives left the discussion tables. They returned home armed with technical knowledge and with a background to get their weaponry for massive attacks.

Hence, to create discord in a calm country the LTTE closed the Mavil Aru anicut on 21 July 2006 as the last resort to meet their demands. Naturally, as history depicts one would expect a huge pressure - local as well as international - on the government to stop their attempts to curb LTTE activities, yet the impact was very insignificant. Major part of the credit should go to the people of the particular area for being wise enough to request of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission and the respective Government officials to inform the LTTE to stop using them as hostages to get their demands met. Even with several requests the LTTE showed no flexibility. Hence, the Commander-in-chief had to decide to launch a military operation freeing the anicut from the LTTE grip in order to end this violation of a basic human right of his own people. This would be the reaction of a responsible Government to protect its people and the country. Betraying the country and handing over a part to the LTTE separatists was not on his agenda.

Mavil Aru anicut which is approximately five kilometres west of the Kallar junction on the Ella - Kanthale road came under the LTTE as a result of the 2002 peace talks. A massive area of paddy land approximately 15,000 acres depends on its most needed water requirement for cultivation. Almost 30,000 Sinhala, Muslim and Tamil people depended on this flow of water for their basic needs. Bringing water from other areas and quenching the thirst of the people will be possible even with great difficulty. But saving the mostly valuable paddy land from drying is impossible unless the anicut starts to function. People led by Buddhist priests gathered in front of the Kallar Army camp putting pressure on the Government to relieve them.

This is how we turned a new page of our recent history. This massive humanitarian operation started on 26 July 2006 and troops liberated the anicut on August 08, 2006.

Following the victory at Mavil Aru troops, continued to liberate the motherland and their brethren achieved their final victory in the East by 10 July 2007 with the fall of LTTE last bastion Thoppigala. Today, with the protection of our Tri Forces and the Police, Easterners are enjoying economical, political and social freedom. With the liberation of the East the Government initiated the development programs after a lapse of two decades. The civil administration and Police totally took over the security and the development work of the East hence, making space for the Security Forces to move North, liberating areas where the light of development was once never seen.

Today, four military frontiers man the approximately 120km long Wanni Forward Defence Line, marching forward regaining LTTE strongholds demolishing Tiger terrorism. The Government and the back up troops of the Sri Lanka Army are throwing in their strongest efforts to maintain the normality of the rest of the country as well as keeping the essential item supply to the people of the uncleared areas intact.

As the troops move close to liberating our motherland from ruthless Tigers, more and more forensic evidence surfaces on the strangulation of our economy, development and freedom by LTTE killers. No proper cultivation had taken place in these areas at least in a decade except for a very few blocks which is insignificant against the estimated population and the reported history of these areas. With the liberation of the historical 'rice bowl' area in Mannar by the troops attached to the 58 Division factors emerged as hard proof against this fact. Huge areas of dry, abandoned fallow paddy lands where there were no signs of a single cultivation within recent years, dried tanks and irrigation channels filled up with soil are heart breaking sights to a true patriotic.

While their own relatives, close friends who moved into Colombo and suburbs are now rich and sophisticated, these innocent Tamil people who were living in these areas endured untold hardships just living on memories of a bygone golden era.

Nearly after a decade troops attached to the 57 Division liberated the holy church of Our Lady Madhu on 24 April 2008. Yet the holy statue to Vellankulam, some 35 km away from this area was brought by Catholic priests back to its original place allowing the people to worship there once again.

Many development activities conducted during the Ceasefire Agreement period require various kinds of machines - from light weighted vehicles to heavy machinery. The fate of these machines under prevailing conditions was doubtful. A ruthless guerilla organization like the LTTE won't leave even a government's hospital ambulance when their requirements are prioritized.

With or without consent these INGO and NGO vehicles and machinery will be taken by the Tigers. This was inevitable.

Pictures brought in by unmanned aircrafts showed that some of those heavy machinery used to make LTTE bunds were bearing the names of some of the INGOs. So it is obvious these belonged to those organizations, but we do not know how they got into Tigers' hands. These might have been forcibly taken by the LTTE from these organizations. Recognizing the threat the Ministry of Defence requested all the INGOs and NGOs to leave the uncleared areas and to relocate their offices in Vavuniya. At present, all the expatriate staff have moved into Vavuniya, but the LTTE has not let the local staffers to leave those areas.

LTTE threats are imposed not only on these development activities but on all humanitarian relief work catering to the innocent people displaced in Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu areas. These relief measures are initiated by the relevant ministries hand in hand with some of the international non governmental organizations to soften the sufferings of displaced people.

On early October Army personnel in Vavuniya detected two vehicles with hidden loads of explosives and batteries. Security personnel believe that these loads which were loaded earlier, must have been stuck behind without unloading due to heavy checking. The container type lorries with a load of batteries inside a false compartment was detected as the container was not taking its respective full load. On suspicion, the Security Forces personnel checked the lorry and found false compartments full of heavy loads of batteries. Two other lorries were later detected with false compartments carrying motor cycle spare parts along with another load of batteries of different sizes. These detections had a considerable negative impact on the functioning of the Tigers.

The LTTE enjoyed its domination mainly in Kilinochchi, and Mullaitivu and some parts of Mannar and Vavuniya districts in the Northern Province before the present operations began. Troops, on completion of the operation in the Silavatura and Mannar front, totally liberated the Mannar District. At present, LTTE has the domination in some parts of Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi districts and the Northern portion of the Vavuniya district.

Sri Lanka Army, Sri Lanka Navy and the Sri Lanka Air Force is achieving their mission of crushing the terrorists of attrition warfare by reducing the air effectiveness by causing losses to personnel and material.

Nothing can abort the gallant forces strong willpower and courage for victory. Even if their enemy is capable of causing severe damages it means nothing to these brave young men. It is said that courage is the other name for life and a coward is like a dead person. With a solid support of a steady Commander-in-Chief in President Mahinda Rajapaksa, our soldiers will not face the slightest chance of defeat in their mission to free their motherland from a deadly terrorist outfit.